J.R.D. (Made At Home)

The J. R. D. project (Je robené doma / Made at Home) is the artist’s second solo exhibition. It reveals his thought, his experiencing of reality and ultimately his understanding of contemporary sculpture.

Like many of his peers, Miro Trubač uses new technologies in the conceptual stage: computer modelling, 3D visualisations set in the virtual space or a 3D scanner. This type of work was hardly imaginable 15 or 20 years ago. Trubač is also a proponent of figurative sculpture and handcrafted techniques. His figures are seemingly playful, uncomplicated and anonymous. The compositions are metaphors of observed situations, or paraphrases of the history of sculpture. Visually, he refers to the German artist Stephan Balkenhol, representing the generation approaching middle age (born 1957), who is currently leading one of the three sculpture studios at the Akademie der Bildende Künste in Karlsruhe. Although their approaches are different, we can also find some parallels: Balkenhol works in wood, while Trubač returns to the old technique of rib-like structure filled with synthetic foam, shaped and modelled in plaster. The completed figures are coloured. However, there is a parallel with Balkenhol in the points of departure: the predominantly male figure is placed on the pedestal of interest, while its form of expression, or rigid story makes it present. It further continues the narrative. Balkenhol says: “... perhaps I provide the viewer with the theme of the story without articulating the end, but I begin the story or at least mediate part of it. There are lots of spectators to finish it...” Miro Trubač draws on his home environment, on his immediate surroundings, on the collective past and the present. In the context of his work he plays with narratives, meanings and interpretations. There are paradoxes and irony, even a touch of sarcastic humour. The small-sized work is based on social paradoxes; the dynamics of the figural composition is “frozen” in time and expression. I must not fail to mention the American sculptor George Segal (1924 – 2000) who created almost life-size figures, using plaster bandages, and placing them in an anonymous environment. Moreover, Miro Trubač colours his figures: it softens the material, adding visual softness, even a childlike playfulness. Nevertheless, we must bear in mind colour symbolism. It reverberates in politically, religiously or socially motivated works such as The Mill Wheel, Personal Jesus, Start or a parody of the monument called Candle March.

 As to the figure: it was regarded as the relic of sculpture in the post-socialist space after 1989. To purify itself from political deposits, it has experienced an imaginative revival in Slovakia in recent years. In the art world, however, it has never been OUT. We merely have to mention today’s “classics” of my generation, such as Urs Fischer (1973) and Emil Alzamore (1975). In Slovakia, for example, there is the tireless and talented Robert Szittay (1972).

 Miro Trubač represents an important generation of artists who (hopefully definitely) dismiss the heroic, political and monumental nature of Slovak sculpture, while not stubbornly sticking to the post-conceptual tendencies in the 1990s, or to the echoes of fantastical realism of the 1970s and 1980s, like the contemporary artists between their forties and sixties. I sincerely wish him (as well as other like-minded peers) good luck on this journey!

Roman Popelár